The Pallbearers Club: A Novel

Paul Tremblay is certainly versatile. Where his last novel, Survivor Song, was a fast paced slam bang adventure, this one is much more introspective and measured. It's a tale of thwarted hopes and the disappointments of life that most readers of a certain age will be able to empathize with, told as a memoir of a life-defining friendship but also punctuated with interjections from that friend, who is often less than impressed with the author's version of events. It's a great conceit that elevated my enjoyment of the novel. I mean, I knew was going to like it anyway as soon as I saw the contents page and realised that all the chapters were named after Hüsker Dü songs, but this sealed the deal. The supernatural element is kept ambiguous throughout, and you'll have to read till the end to discover if it is an actual horror novel, or a story of an awkward young man's instabilities and projections (hey, why can't it be both?), but that won't be a problem, because it's an excellently readable book.